Many Germans regret their purchase or lease of an electric vehicle and Germans overall are increasingly unwilling to consider them.  This has led to a crisis in German electric vehicle industry.

An article last month published by Merkur about the German electric car industry being in crisis and no recovery is in sight in the short term noted:  “A recent YouGov survey shows that more than half of German e-car owners regret their purchase or leasing. The main reason is rising electricity prices. In contrast, other car sectors are experiencing an upswing, as current figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority in Flensburg show.”

We’ve attached a copy of Merkur’s article below (German to English translation using Google Translate).

As we noted in a previous article, Germany’s largest export by value is cars. In 2022,  German exports of electric vehicles (“EVs”), or e-cars, rose more than 65 per cent to some 500,000 units valued at 24.2 billion euros, according to the statistical office Destatis.  In the same year, 1.5 million units of combustion-engine cars were exported, the same as in 2021.

According to Clean Energy Wire in March 2023, in 2022 the United Kingdom was Germany’s biggest e-car export market, with 14 per cent in volume terms, followed by the United States with 13.1 per cent.

“The total number of electric cars on German roads is only slightly above 1 million, as many newly registered – and heavily subsidised – cars were sold abroad at a profit,” Clean Energy Wire noted.

Statista noted: “Given Germany’s large appetite for diesel and petrol cars, the growing share of plug-in electric vehicles in new registrations is striking. About 17.8 per cent of cars sold in 2022 in Germany were battery-electric electric cars, and another 13.7 per cent were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.”

At the start of 2023, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (“PHEV”) subsidies were phased out, resulting in lower PHEV sales compared to 2022, and in December 2023, all EV subsidies ended after a ruling on the Climate and Transformation Fund. In Germany, the sales share for electric cars fell from 30% in 2022 to 25% in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA”), an agency that was founded in 1974 after the 1973 oil crisis to address potential disruptions to the global oil supply but today works with governments and industry to “shape a secure and sustainable energy future for all.”

It seems both Clean Energy Wire and Statista were too quick to hail the success of electric vehicles; the market for which enjoyed a boost through government-planned bans on combustion engine vehicles, both incentives and coercion, and a high degree of social engineering using spurious “climate change crisis” messaging.  However, as with all things, the good sense and power of consumers will reign.

As Clean Energy Wire had to admit less than a year later in January 2024: “The aim by the government and leading automakers to get at least 15 million electric vehicles – including plug-in hybrids – on German roads by 2030 looks increasingly difficult to achieve in view of the sales data.”

Below, NoTrickZone summarises the EV state of affairs.

Half Of German E-Car Buyers Regret Their Purchase Or Lease!

By P Gosselin published by NoTricksZone on 2 June 2024

Citing an article published in the online Merkur.de, Blackout News reports: ‘Half of German e-car owners regret their purchase or lease’.

Apparently German e-car owners are disappointed due especially to “rising electricity prices.”

Recently we reported here that the German e-car industry was “a crisis headed for a catastrophe” and that sales were plummeting.

Q1 2024, EV sales declined some 14.1% compared to Q1 of 2023.

E-car Targets Now a Fantasy

Meanwhile, sales of conventional engine cars have risen strongly over the same period. According to Blackout News, the share of electric cars sold from the entire automobile mix was just 12.2 per cent. and new e-car registrations in the current year are “down significantly.”

Customers overall remain wary of e-cars and no sales boost is in sight. This means Germany will fall far short of its electric car targets.

According to Renate Köcher from the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research: “In the long-term trend, e-mobility has always been in the minority, but now we have reached a new low.”